Chapter 297
Chapter 297
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 297
Even as screams echoed and the scent of blood hung in the air, the soldiers operating the siege engines doggedly carried out their tasks to the bitter end.
"The instant they're set up, commence free fire as fast as possible!"
"Gwaaahk!"
A rock the size of a man's head flew into the chest of a soldier anchoring a catapult to the ground, taking the place of his heart. Yet the soldiers' movements did not falter.
They were, in a word, desperate.
"Fire the Yudonno!"
"Squeal! Squeeal!"
The piglet orcs squealed as they loaded the Yudonno. And what they loaded were massive logs.
"We must destroy as many of the enemy's siege weapons as possible before they are fully set up!"
"Once aimed, fire in the order you're ready!"
Bang! Bang-ba-bang!
The long logs sliced through the wind, flying in a straight line.
"Damn it, too close! Raise it a little more!"
They failed to destroy the siege weapons they were supposed to smash, and only a few panicked enemy soldiers were buried with their screams.
"Catapult crews, prepare oil pouches instead of rocks!"
At Hailon's command, the soldiers loaded large and small oil pouches into the baskets. A length of cord dangled from the mouth of each pouch.
"Once loaded, everyone hold. The first volley will be fired all at once!"
"Loaded, sir!"
"Loaded!"
Calls confirming that the weapons were loaded rang out from all directions, each trying to outshout the others.
"Light them!"
At Hailon's shout, the soldiers began setting fire to the cords trailing from the ends of the oil pouches.
Perhaps because the cords had been soaked in oil, the flames caught the instant a torch was touched to them.
"They're all lit!"
The shout of the knight overseeing the catapult crews rang out, and at the same moment, Hailon's hand pointed toward the enemy lines.
"Fire!"
As Baron Paul issued the order, the oil pouches took flight, fiery tails trailing behind them. The pouches soared through the air before beginning to plunge down to the earth one after another.
* * *
Public Marquis wore an increasingly troubled expression as the battle refused to unfold according to his intentions. Then his eyes caught something flying through the air—neither a boulder nor a stone.
It was only because he possessed superhuman vision that he could make the distinction.
"That's—!"
Unlike Public Marquis, the ordinary soldiers had difficulty making out the leather pouches descending from the sky with tails of fire trailing behind them.
The sun had not yet set, which made the flames at their tails hard to discern.
Merely assuming they were more stones, the soldiers simply raised their shields overhead.
Thwack! Thwa-thwa-thwack!
The oil pouches burst the instant they struck, whether they hit ground or man, and the flames they carried on their tails fed on the oil and spread in the blink of an eye.
Whoosh!
"Gwaaahk!"
"Hee-yiik! Someone put out the fire on my back!"
Roaring torrents of flame and soldiers tasting hell within them. And inevitably, the fire spread to several of the siege weapons as well.
"Must it come down to a war of attrition again after all?"
Public Marquis recalled the siege battle of a few days before.
Shring!
"All forces, full speed!"
Public Marquis drew his sword and spurred his horse. At the same instant, all the troops that had been waiting to the rear began surging forward like a tidal wave.
The catapults that had been set in place began launching boulders in earnest, targeting the fortress.
Hailon watched the troops swarming like ants and recalled the Battle of Gaemunsanseong Fortress. Things were no different now than they had been then.
"Baron Paul, take command of the archers. All Yudonno will switch to arrow-canister loads."
At Hailon's command, they began loading the arrow canisters—each one holding roughly a hundred arrows bound together. They had to kill as many as possible before the enemy closed in.
CRASH!
"Uwaak!"
"Ah, so it finally begins."
A boulder slammed into one section of the wall and ricocheted into the advancing Holy Empire troops, killing men among them. Yet more boulders kept flying in, hammering the walls without regard for the friendly casualties.
"G-get clear!"
Crunch!
A chunk of rock came flying in. The problem was that it fell directly onto a Yudonno that had been loaded with an arrow canister.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
"Aahk!"
"Gwaaah!"
The Yudonno's arrow canister, which should have launched toward the enemy, fired inward instead and turned two friendly soldiers into pincushions.
Fortunately, due to the weapon's characteristics, the arrows did not spread if they did not fly far, so the damage was limited to only two casualties.
But those two casualties had died with thirty or forty arrows each riddling their bodies.
"Squee-ee-eal!"
The piglet orcs that had been loading the Yudonno broke loose and ran about madly, making the chaos inside the fortress even greater.
Thwack!
"Sq-ueal!"
The commotion was quieted by the Pyeonjeon archers handling sniping duties, but they too wore expressions that said they could no longer hold out atop the walls.
They were a hundred times harder to train than ordinary archers.
Hailon had no choice but to nod and withdraw them to the interior. They would snipe at any enemies who made it inside the fortress.
"Keep firing without pause!"
Baron Paul's shouts of encouragement rang through the fortress. The remaining Yudonno also launched their arrow canisters. Yet the enemy continued to swarm in relentlessly.
"The enemy wizards have massed together!"
"What!"
The words shouted by the soldier on observation duty in the watchtower struck Hailon like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. No—to everyone inside the fortress, they sounded like hell itself.
"To your wizard-defense positions! Pyeonjeon archers, move quickly to the secondary points and prepare to snipe!"
They had reduced the number of enemy wizards, but whether their own forces could hold them off—that remained in doubt.
The only chance to stop them was the instant between the lifting of a Shield and the casting of a Slow during a magical assault.
* * *
The Magic Corps' prestige had never been so utterly shattered. Half the wizards were dead or permanently incapacitated, and not because of magic or a Sword Master such as one of the Ten of the Continent. The cause was nothing more than simple arrowheads half the size of ordinary ones.
"Damnation."
The wizards, who had barely regrouped, gathered once more with a single-minded thirst for vengeance. They would have to bring down those accursed walls. Only then could they repay some measure of this disgrace.
As they slowly ascended, Shields tightly wrapped around them, the fortress of Pharus filled their eyes, tantalizingly within reach.
"Oum Sala Umtaa...."
Behind the wizard maintaining the Shield, a second rank and a third rank of wizards began their incantations.
"Now!"
At the lead wizard's signal, the Shields were simultaneously lifted. In that moment, a barrage of 1st Class-level attacks erupted from inside the fortress.
"Mere gnats!"
As Energy Bolts, Magic Arrows, and other attacks of meager power poured in, they rose up in unison, seeking to escape the attack range. When it came to magical attacks of the same type, a spell like Slow would not take effect.
But that very assumption was the trap. The same baby arrows as before stole their lives, one by one.
Shwip-thwack!
"Koff... Th-this is absurd...."
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
"Gwaaahk!"
A single Pyeonjeon arrow burrowed into flesh, scattering the mana they had laboriously gathered, even as the Magic Arrows they had dismissed as trifling hammered their entire bodies.
Anyone watching would surely believe they were simply falling to low-circle magic out of ineptitude.
But once half the wizards were struck down without being able to put up a fight, the survivors realized it had been a trap devised for the very attack they had first suffered.
"Ice Ball!"
"Fire Ball!"
The deaths of their comrades had driven them into a frenzy, but firing off the spells they had already cast was more advantageous for activating their next magic than canceling them. The spells, hurled in a near-death frenzy, flew toward each section of the wall.
Though so many wizards had fallen dead, the number of spells flying in still reached roughly twenty.
In contrast, the wizards mounting the defense numbered slightly fewer than ten.
Defensive magic and offensive magic detonated!
BOOM!
The walls shook, and in the flash that erupted for an instant, foe and friend alike were momentarily blinded.
"I-it's a success!"
The walls were damaged here and there, but none had collapsed.
WHIZZ!
"N-no!"
The defenders' cheers were short-lived. A boulder tore through the air and struck the section of wall already damaged by magic, and before their joy had even faded, it gave way all too easily.
BOOM!
Rumble-rumble.
With a sound like thunder, one corner of the wall collapsed. While everyone stood stunned, Hailon roared.
"Get a hold of yourselves, I said! Every man throwing stones from atop the walls—move to the breached section and pour every stone you have down on them! A portion of the archers will wait inside and concentrate fire on anyone who makes it through! Not a single man is to be let in!"
At Hailon's command, the knights were the first to lead the soldiers into motion. But the weakened wall began to crumble easily even under small impacts.
"General! The west gate has been broken open!"
"What did you say!"
Even the gate—not just the wall—had been smashed through.
"Oil...."
"Sir?"
Hailon's expression seemed to waver in thought for a moment; then, grinding his teeth savagely, he shouted.
"Khmm! Pour oil on the broken gate and set it ablaze!"
"If we do that...."
"The gate is already broken anyway! Pour oil on it and set it ablaze, then throw up a barricade behind it with wagons and sandbags! Move fast!"
"Yes, sir!"
The knight dashed off as if possessed the instant the order was given.
Hailon looked up at the sky. The fiercely blazing sun had vanished somewhere, and even the sunset glow was being pushed aside by the darkness.
And yet the enemy showed no sign of withdrawing.
"Only natural, I suppose...."
Hailon let out a faint, wry laugh even amid the reek of blood and the screams.
After today's battle, the Holy Empire would have to receive troop reinforcements. The common soldiers were one thing, but the Magic Corps—effectively the main strength of the siege—had been virtually annihilated, with barely a quarter of its number remaining.
"Haaah."
In Hailon's estimation, the side that held out would win this battle.
"The enemy is coming over!"
The soldiers who had been pushing ladders away lay fallen here and there. The troops who had made it over first would have prioritized killing them. Armed as they were with polearms, they must have been slain by enemies who rushed in and fought at point-blank range.
"We are going to defend the wall!"
This was no longer a time for directing from the rear. He had to lend a hand himself. As Hailon sprinted forward, the deputies escorting him ran after him.
Every time Public Marquis watched the Empire's soldiers spill their blood on the walls and fall, fury surged inside him.
They breached the wall, and the defenders poured down stones to seal the breach. They smashed through the gate, and the defenders set it ablaze to block their approach. They used their few remaining wizards to extinguish the flames and push inside—only to find a semicircular barricade, conjuring the image of the very mouth of hell, already erected in the interval.